Road Crew New York 2014: The Chaotic Overworld

[Pesky]

Cool, thank you guys! I appreciate it. I ran The Blood-Drinking Box tonight, we didn't get through the whole thing but I am not sure if the handout can be used now.

No, I was too late. The handout was for the mystic bridge, what you called "guano walkways."

The PCs loved Emirikol and wanted to buy some spells and potions off of him. Emirikol said he'd give them the stuff in exchange for the box. A three day trip into the forest and our module is activated...

Nicely done. There's nothing better than your own custom-designed hook.

Guano Room: They got the box, came so close to looking for secret doors... I really bit my tongue. I was going to just hand the secret room to them, but I figured maybe this time I'll let them miss it and see how it feels. I kind of hate it when PCs miss out on treasure, but in this adventure they'll be getting some cool stuff at the end.

I agree with this. At the end, you can always let them know what they missed and how they could have deduced to look for a door. It hopefully increases the probability of them looking for secret doors on their next adventure.

I originally had put two regular Servitors out there with 6 lesser servitors, but I think I'll change it. This is a level one adventure and it just teed off on these guys big time. It was mostly due to bad die rolls... and I mean really bad.

The two servitors is a good idea to scale up the difficulty, but I can understand why at this stage you are changing your mind. I went with "minor" servitors because I felt like normal servitors would wipe out the PCs too easily (the +6 to hit coupled with 2 attacks/round and a high DC fort save), not to mention being very hard to turn (+8 to will saves).

But the players really enjoyed it (to my relief). It is a great adventure. It's not just rooms full of monsters, it has a whole progressive feel to it. The whole thing unfolds. And it's only about 8 pages long!

Awesome praise and great write-up. Thanks! I look forward to hearing what the PCs decide to do with the box (assuming they survive)...

[Netherstorm]

Pesky, Elzemon and The Blood-Drinking Box is a great adventure. My group enjoyed it as much or more than any other one we've played so far (they really loved The One Who Watches From Below, too).

We had a new guy join this week who has never played an RPG before. He picked up on it pretty quick. It all boils down to "tell me what you do" and "roll a 20-sided die" anyway. He made a fighter.

We decided that he had been trapped in one of the blood-draining closets. He emerged to aid our heroes, who were in the midst of a hellacious battle with the swarm on the walkways.

This poor new guy... He fell in the golden liquid and sank right to the bottom. He failed roll after roll. Meanwhile, the adventurers fired off range attacks, missing the swarm over and over. Their dice rolls were just as awful this week as they were last week.

The new guy was so close to drowning, but eventually he swam up and climbed out - I decided that the walkways have arched undersides that touch the pools, as is depicted on the title page art. They somehow survived this. Their biggest mistake was to run from the swarm rather than attacking. They'd be inside the swarm, try to run, provoke an attack of opportunity and get knocked prone. It was brutal.

Elzemon felt so bad for them, he repeatedly apologized. It was that rough!

The Stairs: The new guy was lawful, so in his blood went. They spent a few days climbing the stairs. The tirgefrabs came after them again, and this time they refused to attack the cat-man cleric. The wizard killed almost all of the tirgefrabs with one magic missile spell.

The Waterfall: I was very worried that the party would get slaughtered outside. The lesser servitors paralyze you for 1d3 days on a hit! And there's eight of them! I carefully held their hands in this fight, urging them to burn luck when necessary. This very easily could have been a TPK. The wizard again came through for them, slaughtering almost all of the servitors with one or two spells.

The heroes chose to bring the box to Emirikol. They seem to really like him. The party's chaotic wizard kind of looks up to him. Using Emirikol really seems to have paid off and will make "Emirikol Was Framed" that much more interesting.

They went home to Gnatdamp and rested. I have this six-armed woman who is related to Al-Hazred, the wizard in Fate's Fell Hand. Al Hazred contacted her, and dropped the adventure hook on the PCs through her.

So yes, we started Fate's Fell Hand tonight. Preparing this was quite a challenge! It is a very dense adventure. I make handwritten notes, and I think I ended up with 6 1/2 pages.

I've been building to this adventure since we started the campaign. I have littered the campaign with references to the wizards and their three-way spell duel. I made the fortress in Sailors of the Starless Sea Erodiade's former home, I created a "safehouse" of Al-Hazred's when the heroes went to fight the dragon, and I made the Barrowdowns from Well of the Worm a ruined battlefield of the wizards' soldiers.

I still have one question. What does the Deck of Fates do? I mean, besides its' odd function in the adventure. These wizards fought over it fiercely, and it appears to have no use whatsoever.

This adventure has tons of cool details. Intrigue at the Court of Chaos was breezy - an easy, awesome read. This one is far more challenging (for me, anyway). The scenario seems quite complex, and even after reading it cover to cover I wasn't certain where the agents of the wizards go and what they do each day. The wizards themselves stay hidden away in their safehouses.

For example, one thing that can happen at night is that the ladies in waiting have a little party where they make three people fight over their affections. But there's only an evil priest, a jester, a captain of the guard type and 20 skeletal warriors! Are the 4 of Swords skeletons meant to be living or something? The priest and the jester don't seem like the types to even want to be involved with the ladies, anyway.

So first off, there's barely three people to fight each other over these nice young ladies until the PCs arrive.

Second, these people are members of different factions until dawn (when they get shuffled to random factions). Their goal is to snatch cards from the deck from the other wizards and battle other members of the enemy factions. But here we have a party where members of different factions are hanging out?

Confusion aside, there's a ton of cool stuff in this scenario. There's lots of secret rooms, and each of the three wizards are fleshed out extremely well. I love Al-Hazred's area and the encounter with him. Erodiade's lake is really cool, too. And I also really, really like the trapped coffer...

The Manor: So our heroes end up in the demi-plane via a crack in the cave. They go right to the manor. They could hear the party going on. I practically put a neon arrow pointing at the party room but the heroes were not biting. They went into the chapel, saw a symbol of Magog (I made the cleric a former agent of the Court of Chaos just to re-inforce the notion that the court exists and are still out there.. I like the court and plan to use them more).

The Prince of Swords: As soon as they saw the Magog stuff, the PCs bailed out of the chapel. They went into the throne room, where drunk captain guy was. Somehow, a duel broke out between the captain and a PC cleric. The captain has a 19 AC and 42 hit points, and two attacks. Shockingly, our group let the duel happen with no foul play at all. End result: The cleric died. He will be reborn the next day as part of the deck.

Then the party jumped the captain and killed him. It was a rough fight for them.

The Flies: They went outside and checked out the marsh. They found the secret tunnel under the flagstone right away (again to my shock). They went down and killed the devil-fly thing (very cool monster!).

The Coffer: I love this coffer. What an awesome encounter. So many times, a trapped chest comes off lame in an adventure. This thing is epic. They went in to this cavern and found the secret plate on the wall. The evil wizard in the party pulled out the coffer, cut her hand on it, failed her will save, and thus was geased to defend the coffer with her life!

This worked out so well, because this evil wizard had repeatedly been dickish to the party. She flat-out ditched them during the fight with the swarm. And now we had a showdown. The scary thing was that she probably could have spellburned and really messed the party up with a choking cloud. She did cast choking cloud, but didn't spellburn. She has a horrible AC and few hit points, so the dropped her quickly.

We stopped it there as the store was closing.

The mood was weird tonight. The players were distracted and I had a hard time connecting with them. I'm not sure why. The store was very busy... there was a magic tournament as well as a pokemon tournament going, and it was loud in there.

There is also an issue with dice. This is becoming a pet peeve of mine. How do you play an RPG and not own dice?! How is that possible? The new guy obviously gets a pass. There was endless comments like "I need a d8", "I need three more d4's" and then a healthy dose of dice-dropping (another pet peeve).

If I were to rate tonight's session, I'd give it a 5 out of 10. The adventures were very good, but the group dynamic was way off and it felt like it should have gone better than it did. It started to warm up at the end with the flies and the coffer. Part of it might be that Fate's Fell Hand is so different from the other adventures we've done. Up until now, they've all been straightforward dungeon crawls. When I plopped the heroes into a demi-plane and showed them the handout, they were completely lost. And I mean COMPLETELY. Dead silence. I had to have the miniature woman of extraordinary beauty prod them repeatedly, offering suggestions and advice.

She is becoming a very popular NPC, by the way. In town, they built her a mini-house (I guess like a barbie dream house, only it looks more like a tiny swamp hovel). The evil wizard is starting to go back and forth with her.

I've rambled enough. We'll probably do most of this adventure next week. I have no idea what to run next. I was thinking maybe The Balance Blade, but that has a final encounter that is basically an inter-party combat to the death... I don't think that would go over well at all.

[Pesky]

Pesky, Elzemon and The Blood-Drinking Box is a great adventure. My group enjoyed it as much or more than any other one we've played so far (they really loved The One Who Watches From Below, too).

Thanks Netherstorm! I'm happy to hear it! Yeah, Jobe Bittman's module is super cool.

We had a new guy join this week who has never played an RPG before...We decided that he had been trapped in one of the blood-draining closets. He emerged to aid our heroes, who were in the midst of a hellacious battle with the swarm on the walkways.

Nice way to handle it. It's too bad that he was plagued by poor rolls.

I was very worried that the party would get slaughtered outside. The lesser servitors paralyze you for 1d3 days on a hit! And there's eight of them! I carefully held their hands in this fight, urging them to burn luck when necessary. This very easily could have been a TPK. The wizard again came through for them, slaughtering almost all of the servitors with one or two spells.

Yeah, that's a tough one. Often it's the cleric that saves the day with a massive turn result.

The heroes chose to bring the box to Emirikol. They seem to really like him. The party's chaotic wizard kind of looks up to him. Using Emirikol really seems to have paid off and will make "Emirikol Was Framed" that much more interesting.

I really like how you link all the published adventures together. If you are ever feeling ambitious and have some spare time on your hands, it would be nice to see a condensed summary where you just listed the modules you used and the hooks you employed to tie them together.

There is also an issue with dice. This is becoming a pet peeve of mine. How do you play an RPG and not own dice?! How is that possible? The new guy obviously gets a pass. There was endless comments like "I need a d8", "I need three more d4's" and then a healthy dose of dice-dropping (another pet peeve).

Have you checked out the "Crawler's Companion" here? Its a free app for iOS, Android, and others. They could download it to their cell phones and then they'd have all the dice they needed. The tool is awesome.

Thanks again for the write-ups!

[Netherstorm]

I will definitely have them check out the crawler's companion. I forgot all about it!

We got a lot less done than I thought we would this week. I figured we'd finish Fate's Fell Hand entirely, but we weren't even close.

I like this adventure but I am still confused about a lot of things. This could just be my poor reading comprehension. If the PCs get the devil's plaque, can they order him around? Do they get dealt in each day? I am pretty sure the answer is no. And I still have no answer to the big question: What does the deck do? Why did these wizards want it in the first place?

The new guy is having a really hard time grasping RPGs in general. I am so immersed in RPGs, that I forget that "regular" people don't know what the hell I mean when I say "roll a d8". And they are going to need a minute to figure out which die is the 8-sided one!

The Devil: The heroes had the coffer. The jester showed up and trie to co th heroes into leaving it alone. When that failed, he attacked. It was a harrowing battle but the adventurers were victorious. The devil escaped in fly form with but a single hit point remaining.

Drawing the Cards: We had an odd moment where the adventurers ended up in the throne room when the devil drew the deck. Should the devil attack them? Once he drew the Prince of Swords, should the prince attack them?

The prince is tough. The adventurers only gain 1-2 hit points back per night, plus lay on hands if they are lucky. If they have to fight these guys every day, this adventure is going to be impossible to finish.

Although that lead to an interesting question. One player asked me if they remained in this demiplane, fighting for the wizards, getting re-born each day, would they keep accumulating XP? I figure the answer is yes. Of course, this is impossible because the demiplane is slowly collapsing, as they'd soon learn.

So the cards were drawn. The dead cleric was brought back to life as an agent of the yellow wizard. He was given mental orders to join the PCs and to help them claim the plaques from the other wizards.

They found the secret door under the carpet and saw it needed three keys to be opened. This lead them to finally go to room 2-3.

Ladies in Waiting: Each lady would grant a champion a key. The PCs figured this out on their own, to my surprise. One wizard immediately gained a key by casting a spell, triggering his chronomantic amulet to re-roll, which tore open a hole in time and summoned himself from a few days in the future as an agent of Erodiade. The future self was fading, and I gave them time to ask him one question. They couldn't think of anything before he faded away.

Getting the other key proved problematic. Terrible roles and a lack of ideas led to an amusing solution: The wizard cast darkness and the heroes tumbled around in the dark and snatched the other two keys from the ladies.

The Stone Drake: Down into Al Hazred's caves they went. The stone drake can turn you to stone! At last, a chance for the heroes to use their most hated spell - Ekim's Mystical Mask. The wizard cast it on herself, giving her a +4 to her saves vs. turning to stone. Welp.. she turned to stone anyway. Failed her save.

Al Hazred: The party didn't mess with the pool at all. They walked right by it. They ended up trying to take Al Hazred's robe. One of the party clerics got sucked into the void.. gone forever. He doesn't get reborn, right? We had a long encounter full of low rolls, as the heroes desperately tried to pull off Al Hazred's Celetial Mantle. The guy who got it had to burn almost all of his luck to get it. He literally has a Luck score of one.

The Pool: They messed with the pool. The miniature woman of extraordinary beauty, who at this point is almost a loudspeaker for the DM to keep the PCs moving, helped them mess with the pool, kill the ooze and take the cards.

This was better than last week. Probably a 6 out of 10. The adventure is good but these players are really lost in general. The chemistry is weird with the injection of the new guy. I think with a few more weeks under his belt, he will get the hang of things.

[Netherstorm]

We finished Fate's Fell Hand tonight. A lot happened:

- The thing I find most difficult as a DM is managing players. Stuff comes up in almost every group... personalities inevitably clash. What often happens is things brew under the surface and then it ends up poisoning the campaign. I had noticed some tension driven from a few areas: There was an evil PC rubbing people the wrong way, there was a player who was taking all of the treasure, and I sensed a general growing contempt between players. I decided to tackle it head on at the start of the session. They took it extremely well and I think we got past it. That's good, because I got the vibe it could have killed the game.

- As if that wasn't enough... I left everything at home. I showed up at the store and realized I had left the adventure, the rulebook and my notes at home! I didn't really have time to drive all the way home so I had to run this whole thing... from memory! Yikes. This is where my preparation method pays off. I had gone through the adventure and written down pages of notes, all so I could have everything I needed at a glance. This also allows me to absorb and retain the information much better than just sitting down and reading the adventure.

- The Forest: The heroes checked out the forest, fought a phlogiston worm, and looked at the phlogiston fog/wall/barrier. The evil wizard decided to... walk into it. Without testing it! I had him roll an agility check to see if he could react when he saw himself being un-made.. failed. The player was devastated. The evil wizard was one of the only characters left. The question i wasn't sure of was whether the wizard would be reborn the next day in the demiplane? I assumed not, because the phlogiston is eating the whole place and the wizards are desperately trying to fend it off.

Looking at the text, it says: "Objects (or characters) pressed through the barrier are rendered into ethereal threads and instantly dispersed."

On page 4 it says: "...the adventurers must find a means of escaping the Vale of the Magi or see their souls torn asunder by the ravening phlogiston."

Also on page 4: "Death at the fangs of a phlogiston worm is the sole exception to this rule. Any character (PC or NPC) that is unmade by the worm cannot be raised again, his spirit and soul consumed by roiling chaos."

Seems to me the phlogiston destroys you utterly! I could be wrong. The player was bummed but I pointed out to him that he didn't even test it with a stick or anything. He just walked right in. I even gave him a roll to react in time to jump back when he saw himself unravelling.

The heroes went to the Lake. I had some of Erodiade's 4 of swords skeletons lurking about. After a lot of waiting and probing, they discovered that the entrance to her lair would appear at night.

I remembered the firefly swarm being a very nasty encounter when I read it. I couldn't recall all of the details, so I made it where the heroes had to cross the lake on the stones, avoiding the fireflies or else fall in. Falling into a body of water has proven to be more deadly to this party than almost anything. They roll incredibly poorly and they wear heavy armor - which means they sink right to the bottom.

This was a long drawn out battle. I remembered that the fireflies were of unlimited supply, but i decided to limit it to 30 fireflies, each easily killed as if they were a 4e minion. This was very deadly, but they pulled it off.

Down below, I remembered Erodiade was sitting looking at her plaques in the "solid water" cavern. They fought her and the place collapsed. I made this like a 4e skill challenge with the lake collapsing in on them. They rolled well and escaped.

They made their way to the tower, which floated out alone past a cliff. They did not know that a bridge would magically appear at a certain time of the night.

I decided to have the jester follow them. I was very unclear as to what happens to the jester when the heroes get his card. Do they control him? I assume not, because I don't think the PCs control the other people whose cards they own.

I played it like the jester just wanted his card back, and in fact he wanted all of the cards. He tricked the heroes, telling them he knew how to summon a bridge. He tricked a PC into standing at the edge of the cliff, and then tried to shove him off. The PC ended up hanging on the edge of the cliff, the void below him.

The heroes saved him (lowering a deer pelt to him to grab) and pushed the jester off the side. The bridge eventually appeared.. the heroes went in, had a weird encounter in the marionette/mannequin room (I couldn't remember the details!) and then went to the "whip the old man" room. I kind of stumbled through it, but in the end, they got their plaques and were ready to return home.

I originally was excited about this adventure based solely on its' cover (yes, I judge books by their cover). I like the scenario, but I found it very confusing and despite the abundance of words I was still unclear about a lot of things.

Additionally, this is not an adventure for a novice DM, not at all. Each day these enemies "respawn", while the heroes gain 1-2 hit points back per night. PCs also may become agents of the enemy, and the DM will have to reconcile what the wizard would order the PC to do with making sure the player doesn't have to just sit at the table for hours with nothing to do because his PC was ordered to stand at a lake or something.

I didn't understand the role of the ladies-in-waiting at all, and I couldn't decide if Captain Kashei should just be hunting the PCs each and every day (he would slaughter them in days). Same with the devil!

It's definitely worth running, but just be ready - this is not your "read and run" type of module. A lot of thought and planning is needed both when you prepare it and when you run it. You'll need to know what your NPCs are doing and where they are each day.

I think next week we're going to do The Sea Queen Escapes. It looks awesome.

[Netherstorm]

We started The Sea Queen Escapes this week. As I prepared it, I really liked it. A dungeon in a giant turtle's shell... that is epic. I was worried the group would fly through the dungeons really quickly. I didn't have time to prepare the whole adventure and I wasn't sure how long what I had ready would take.

It turned out we barely got through the first section.

Part of this is because we had a few new characters who needed to roll their spells and mercurial magic. My usual modus operandi is from the moment we sit down to get to the action right away. For years, my idea was that all of that miscellaneous character stuff should be done outside of the game so we don't waste time.

This concept kicked into overdrive when I was running 4e. I was running the orcus path, trying to get my characters from level 1 to level 30. If you are not familiar with 4e, the fights can take a really long time. To hit the next level, you are supposed to do 10 encounters.

So, we would play once a week for 5 hours. And by gawd, I was determined to do 5 encounters so the heroes could level every two weeks. Boom, 60 weeks later they'd be level 30! I was constantly hurrying them and cracking the whip, keeping them moving.

That mindset is firmly ingrained in me. But tonight, I accepted that this stuff had to be done at the table - some of the players don't have books at home.

One thing I get worried about is keeping the players' attention. If one player is sitting there rolling on a table with me, the other players are going to have to sit at the table and look at their phones or whatever. I am going to lose their attention... something I always try to avoid.

But it had to be done, and honestly, it was ok. Rolling on the tables is actually pretty fun. When it was time to play, the "dormant" players re-focused. It didn't seem to damage the experience. I think I am going to go ahead and accept that for this campaign, the first 15 minutes of a session is for "maintenance", leveling, spells, patron stuff and going over rules.

The heroes returned from the demi-plane. They needed a boat for this adventure. I decided that Lexaliah, from Intrigue at the Court of Chaos, would appear and reward them with a ship painted white and gold as a reward for helping the Scions of Law secure the Yokeless Egg.

Dreams were had of a kelp-wearing lady in a globe of water begging for aid, causing our heroes to sail to Shadankin's lair.

That floating turtle shell room.. awesome! It took a long time and it was really challenging. If you haven't read it, the PCs have to cross this massive gap. There's seawater 30 feet below. There are hovering turtle shells that they need to jump on to cross. That is 10 DC 10 Strength checks! Falling means 2d6 damage and the potential to drown. Worse, when they get halfway across, Lampreymen start heaving harpoons at them!

You would think after nearly drowning due to plate armor in Elzemon and the Blood-Drinking Box that the heroes would be more cautious around bodies of water. They weren't.

There's a lot of things a PC could do to help themselves navigate this encounter. They could lower a rope to the water and swim across. Or have one hero cross the shells, and secure a rope on the far side so the heroes could cross hand-over-hand. Heck, they could even grab a lifeboat or raft from their ship, drop it in the water, and safely traverse it.

Our heroes had no plan. One dude jumped on some shells and fell. His full plate caused him to begin drowning a process conveniently outlined in an upcoming encounter). The party barely saved him.

The heroes wanted to use Force Manipulation to make a floating disc to cross. Now I don't think force discs can hover over water or air like that, but I quietly allow it until it becomes abusive. They needed the help!

Plus, their idea was to take off all their armor, put it on the disc and float it to the other side. Then, our armorless heroes would climb down into the water, swim across, and climb up.

They were prime targets for the lampreymen. It was utter chaos! Two wizards had stayed on the ledge and eventually killed the lampreymen with magic missiles.

This encounter took a very long time, but it was great and very memorable.

Then they explored the other two rooms, killing some lampreymen.

And we squeaked in the last room before the store closed. The heroes had found the jellyfish suits which allowed them to breathe underwater for awhile. There were 3. So they went down to the room with the lagoon and the pearl. Three heroes put the suits and jumped in.

The giant hammerhead shark attacked! I rolled bad and so did they. It was fascinating. Most of the party stood on the stairs, unable to do much of anything. None of them would jump in the water to help. They were so traumatized from earlier near-drownings that they simply would not swim out there to help!

So 3 heroes had to fight the shark alone. It was a very deadly battle, and the new guy nearly lost his character. He is now getting more into the game after a very slow start. He was getting real panicky when he was down to 4 hit points. And wouldn't you know it, he finished the shark off, plunging his blade into the shark's head (I let him describe the kill).

I really like this adventure. I like pirate/nautical adventures in general. I am very excited about running the turtle dungeon next week.

[Netherstorm]

I decided to start posting these recaps in my blog. The newest one is here:

http://thecampaign20xx.blogspot.com/201 ... crawl.html

Short Version:

- We got through most of the Sea Queen
- The players are getting along much better
- I got a huge box of swag from goodman games and handed it out
- I brag about how we have probably run more World Tour sessions this year than anybody else
- Sea Queen is awesome, especially the turtle dungeon and the tar with dead seagulls
- The Sea Change Curse is not used - not sure if the players could handle it
- A player thinks Force Manipulation is "broken"
- A player thinks his plate armor has made him unhittable (I don't agree - one or two hits drops a PC, so it' good that you have a high AC)

[Netherstorm]

Long Version:

http://thecampaign20xx.blogspot.com/201 ... crawl.html

Short Version:

- They had a hard time against the sea queen after she cast a gigantic magic missile. They used some old weird item I had given them to send her away.
- Three months of rest in town. New familiar. Drank at the bloated leech. Sezrekan, the patron of the wizard, whisked the heroes away to another world to claim The Balance Blade (the item and adventure in the back of "The 13th Skull" module).
- There was a save or die glyph. Warrior died.. he didn't have enough Luck to burn to save himself.
- The succubus fight was great. The darkness spell is crazy-effective.
- I changed the adventure so that the wizards' familiar, a miniature woman of extraordinary beauty, grabbed the blade and turned on the party. In the module, it is designed so that a PC turns on his allies and fights them to the death. I changed it, so that the likely outcome was that the miniature woman was swept away by Sezrekan along with the blade.
- Next week, our heroes are going to go on a quest to save her! I am going over the Sezrekan material in the DCC RPG book and in the adventure "Tower of the Black Pearl" to get an idea of Sezrekan's home.

I'll also need to think of what exactly Sezrekan does with the Balance Blade. In the text, it is said that it is an item of neutrality that can sway the balance of law and chaos. This is just like the Yokeless Egg in "Intrigue in the Court of Chaos". Maybe Sezrekan wants to trade it to the Court of Chaos in exchange for something?

[Netherstorm]

Long Version:

http://thecampaign20xx.blogspot.com/201 ... ssics.html

Short Version:

- There was a billion people in the store playing Magic and Pokemon. It was very loud.
- I ran the 13th Skull, modified so that the heroes were rescuing their familiar, not the Duke's daughter.
- The Tomb Shadows were cool an old-school.
- The Stinking Pit of Hell was awesome.
- The heroes really almost drowned again because they keep forgetting that they are wearing plate mail.
- The Book of Planes is epic. I love the talking waves. The heroes took the book and have plans for it.
- This was a good adventure, though it only took about 2 hours to go through they skipped some stuff). Next week I am going to have a wacky homebrew where the heroes try to steal the balance blade from the Court of Chaos, a trip which should take them to 1986 New York City for at least a little bit.

[Netherstorm]

I made a combined blog post about the last two sessions of this campaign. One was horrible and one was really good.

Short Version:

Last Week....
- I re-purposed the dungeon in Doom of the Savage Kings to fit my campaign story
- I wasn't into it at all and it definitely hurt the game
- By the end of the session I became worried that the campaign could fizzle out

This Week....
- I ran a long-awaited adventure where our heroes went to cheesy-movie-style 1986 New York City
- I slapped it together in 20 minutes before the session
- The players loved it beyond all reason
- This was a reminder to myself to stop over-preparing for RPG sessions
- We had an interesting moment at the end of the final fight. 3 PCs had been dropped by the evil wizard's magic missile. I am starting to get my RPG systems mixed up. I had it in my head that the PCs had "death saves" to make (from D&D 5e). The players were stunned when I told them they'd been brought to life by a cleric - they thought their characters had died. I am starting to think a new death mechanic is needed so I don't keep running into this. The PCs are 4th level. I don't mind a PC death now and then, but they should not be dropping like flies at this stage of the game, IMO. I wasn't even using a super-powerful enemy.. it was just one good roll on a magic missile spell.

Long Version (includes rambling on Castle Greyhawk and Shadowrun):

http://thecampaign20xx.blogspot.com/201 ... astle.html

[Netherstorm]

Long Version:

http://thecampaign20xx.blogspot.com/201 ... crawl.html

Short Version:

- The Crawler's Companion app is the greatest thing ever. It has got me really excited about running the game.
- I started Blades Against Death, which is a cool adventure but...
- I have major issues with the way the adventure is organized. Maybe I am slow/missing stuff, but in just the first section I had major problems with the vagueness in the tarot reading, massively important information on the holy oil not being described in the section on the holy oil, and was uncertain how long the artifact can be used before it fades away. Not to mention issues with the...
- Plague rats! What a confusing stat block!
- Basically, my heroes went to the temple in disguise with the intent of stealing the artifact during or after the ritual. They watched the ritual, the ritual ended, they were asked to leave, and... they left. They tried to sneak into the temple the next day and got their asses kicked by 13 plague rats. They ran away from the plague rats.
- The players weren't frustrated at all. They were amused. They like these more wide-open adventures. It's just that they're completely bewildered when they're not on a "railroad".

[Netherstorm]

I didn't make a blog post of Monday's session because the whole game got cut short... Things are grim:

- The adventurers made their second attempt at getting into the temple. They busted out the sniper rifle and the uzis and took out the guards.
- They rushed in as the temple mobilized. The gate was down. A knock spell opened it.
- They then proceeded to stumble right into the Abbotess' room and found the Argent Falx in a secret little thingie. Luck finally went their way.
- One invisibility spell later, and our heroes were free.
- The tension between a couple players seemed to re-surface tonight.
- We had to end early... one player has some medical issues that flared up and he he had to go.

Tonight (Wednesday) at D&D Encounters, I met a new couple who wants to play DCC. They'll be coming next Monday. This is good, because I was honestly thinking that this group is about to disintegrate. Two of the players just rub each other the wrong way, simple as that.

[Netherstorm]

We played again on Monday. I will not make a blog post on this, as I don't think I have all that much to say!

The big thing this week is that I brought in some new players. I met them at D&D Encounters the previous wednesday, thought they were cool, and finagled them into this game. It is a sort of important thing, as this campaign is really on life support. It's not overt hostility between players or anything like that, it's just that two players don't mesh well. That is a problem when there's only three players total!

But I had 6 players this week. One was a sort of tagalong and I don't expect him back. The other two... I hope they'll be back, but I guess we'll see. They were awesome and injected a ton of life into the campaign.

I tried to hook the new players right away with a "flashback" scenario, going through the highlights of their adventuring careers. I cooked up six weird adventure names like "The Gargoyle Duke's Lover", and then described a scene from it and asked a specific player what he or she did. Then they'd make a roll. Failure meant corruption or a scar or something, and success meant treasure or some kind of gimmick. A lot of the adventures were linked to the stuff our group has been doing, which kept them interested.

Once that intro was out of the way, we finished Blades Against Death. The charnel house was cool, but I just can't handle the bulky text. Even when preparing the adventure I'd get bogged down. All of the scenarios are cool: Phantom skeletal hands, the bad guy with the floating weapons, the cremation ovens that shot out ghostly flames. It's just difficult to sort out the essential details, and even with my little home-made cheat sheet I had a hard time running this. When flavor and background info is mixed in with descriptions it makes things very difficult for me.

I loved the final game against death, though I don't really understand the card game. It seems to come down to the same four cards every draw (I assume this is because only four are printed in the adventure). I could go on about the cheating rules and etc., but basically I like the ideas but I have trouble understanding the details.

Next week is a big question mark. If none of the new people come back, I am not sure if this game will survive. Apparently one player was close to starting an interparty combat last week. That kind of thing isn't always a dealbreaker, but I am certain that that would kill the group.

[Netherstorm]

I'm going to cover the last two weeks in this one post. We've been making our way through The Croaking Fane by Michael Curtis. I'd actually run this in D&D Next a year or so ago with a different group of players.

9/22:

- Two of the new players (boyfriend and girlfriend) came back. The third guy who wasn't into it did not.

- This session was OK. The heroes explored the upper temple level. My focus has been on locking these new players in. With them there at the table, there's a much better group dynamic. As the game went on, I became a bit concerned that one of the new players wasn't especially into it. It looked like your classic girlfriend deal: "My boyfriend dragged me to this, I gave it a shot and now I'm just kind of here for him" scenario.

- There's a lot of cool things in this adventure. It's a toad dungeon! What's not to love? The only drawback is that there is not much in the way of loot. Our heroes killed the toadgoyles, the slime, and the croaking doom swarm with little trouble.

- It was a decent session, but I left determined to really make this group gel. I had no idea how to do it.

9/27:

- All three of the noobs were back. The not-so-into-it guy had made a cleric on his own, to my surprise.

- I came into this one nice and ready. I was kind of resigned to the fact that this group was either going to work or it wasn't, and that there is only so much I can do in that regard.

- We had a table of 6 players, which was nice. They explored the depths of the temple. I was extremely worried that the mummy toads would be too tough. They looked insanely powerful on paper. But the group mopped the floor with them to my utter surprise. The key: Apple-sized balls of force (courtesy of force manipulation).

- Then we got to my favorite room. It's the toad-love room with the statue of the man and the toad in an "unwholesome embrace". They found the five vials of aphrodisiac and had a debate about whether they should try one. Eventually, one guy did (he is a cleric who is a cat-man thanks, I think, to a potion in The Emerald Enchanter).

So he drinks the vial and declares he is willingly failing his saving throw. And thus he is overcome by certain impulses. He races to one of the monk cells to uhhh express himself for the next hour.

I can't properly convey how funny this was. The group just died laughing in the middle of the game store to the point other people were kind of lurking close to see what was going on.

The group let the cat-man be and continued exploring. They got to the area with the 30 giant frogs and realized they could use the aphrodisiac on the frogs, so that the toads would be pre-occupied with each other and the PCs could slip past them. This is impressive as the author of the adventure suggests this very scenario in the book!

The problem: Cat-man had the vials. The thief (played by the girlfriend) would have to sneak into the cell and pick cat-man's pocket while he was.. well.. you know. She had taken the frog-plate helmet in the upper level. She took a break, dropped her visor, and slipped into the cell. More laughter ensued. She got the vials and got out.

We didn't quite finish the adventure.. there's a couple main rooms left. But the important thing here is that when the session was done, the group kept telling me how awesome it was. One of my original players called it the best session ever.

So I had this goal of getting the group locked in as a cohesive unit but I had no idea how to do it. It turns out that The Croaking Fane did it for me.

[Netherstorm]

We had to skip a week... I had a lot of real life work to do. We got back to the game on Monday. We finished The Croaking Fane and I ran a short scenario - a "wizard's convention".

- Our heroes made their way into the room with the pool full of dreaming toad-men. A huge fight broke out and we almost had a TPK. The party rogue set off the statue, boiling everyone in the pool.

- They actually split the party to check out the Toad-Thing room. Most of the PCs were too hurt to dare it. Somehow, two PCs and a bunch of summoned animals took down the Toad-Thing in a wild fight that involved a moose, a shield maiden and some wombats.

- On the way out, they triggered the stone idol. They barely took it down. Their resources were beyond depleted.

- I had been working on a home-brewed scenario based on some DCC RPG art. I wanted the heroes to go to a secret meeting of a wizard society (based on the image of the wizards on page 51 of the DCC RPG book). Emirikol the Chaotic took the heroes there to trade magic items, learn spells and rub elbows with other wizards. I named this society the Circle of Sequestered Magicks (ripped off from Hackmaster and Knights of the Dinner Table).

- The other wizards in COSM were NPCs they'd heard of or met, including the wizard from Elzemon and the Blood Drinking Box and a Yeti wizard from the secret city of the yetis. I based other wizards on peter mullen art from the DCC RPG book.

- I had bought this OSR monster book pdf called The Teratic Tome to use for DCC RPG. Most of the monsters are very explicit and gory, which I hadn't expected. I had a woman wizard with a crustacean arm hire the PCs to go to hell to retrieve some hell/blood stone for her to make a golem with. The heroes encountered some Teratic Tome monsters and returned safely with the stone.

- The climax of the adventure involved a heavily corrupted wizard (the hooded wizard/monster on page 119 of the DCC RPG book) declaring that he served Hekanhodah of the Court of Chaos. He told the wizards of COSM that whoever took the balance blade from the heroes and gave it to him would receive an item of immense power from the court of Chaos.

- A huge fight broke out on hovering discs. The embiggened wizard (from DCC rpg page 107) was sent hurtling to his doom. Most of the other wizards were put to sleep. The heroes also managed to kill the invisible imp Elzemon who they hated (I really lay it on thick, with Elzemon constantly making fun of the PCs). They took great satisfaction in frying him.

I am bringing this conflict between the PCs and The Court of Chaos to a boil. Not sure how it will be resolved. Right now I am having each member of the court take a shot at them. The balance blade is killing only chaotic creatures. I am thinking I should have the world start to tip in the balance of law.. not sure how to portray that though. Maybe I should have some NPCs close to the wielder shift from Neutral to Lawful?

After I bought the Teratic Tome, I saw that the author had made a wild adventure called the Slaughtergrid. I read that it was gory and explicit - a dungeon built into the lower half of a giant woman's body! I ran it by the players to see if they were comfortable with it (I was specifically concerned about offending two new players, a boyfriend and girlfriend). Turns out they all love the sound of this adventure.

I have a rule in my games. Rape does not "Exist". In general, rape just doesn't happen and is never even considered. This is done to avoid all sorts of real life uncomfortable situations. I was wondering if there would be any rape-y stuff in the Slaughtergrid, but as I am reading it I am seeing that this adventure isn't that explicit to begin with.

So... next week we begin the Slaughtergrid. I'll be interested to see how it affects the campaign. There's a lot of XP and magic items to be had. The group is very excited about it.

Thank god I brought in those new players. The campaign is really rolling along nicely, now.

[Netherstorm]

I wrote an article about The Croaking Fane here: http://thecampaign20xx.blogspot.com/201 ... -fane.html.

I had bought a pdf full of monster called The Teratic Tome, as I figured it could be useful for DCC. The monsters ended up being a bit too gory and sexual for this game, but I ended up reading more about the author, Raphael Chandler. I learned that he made an "Old School" D&D-type adventure called Slaughtergrid. The more I read about it, the more I liked it. The problem: It was pretty perverted. It's a dungeon built into the lower half of a giant woman. One guess as to where the entrance is...

Seeing how the frog-love aphrodisiac was a hit in The Croaking Fane, I decided to ask the players if the Slaughtergrid was something they'd like to go through. Their enthusiasm was overwhelming. So I bought it, I printed it, and I started running it tonight...

- When reading reviews of the adventure, there's all these warnings about how sexual it is. But when I started going through it - not so much.

- The beginning has this hexcrawl to find the slaughtergrid. Not many of the encounters grabbed me. In my experience, players do not like a prolonged "search" for a dungeon - it feels like a waste or a stall tactic. They came to the game to go through that dungeon. They don't want to waste a session looking for it (unless the search is insanely awesome, but I haven't seen too many of those).

- I grabbed a couple quick encounters from the hexcrawl to use. The centerpiece was the red, ecil unicorn who eats your genitals. To say it went over well is an understatement.

- Once inside the dungeon, I encountered a problem. The gimmick of this dungeon is that when a PC dies, they are reborn in this pink globe called "the ovum". When they are reborn, they roll on this mutation chart, which has all sorts of insane results. Cool, right? Very DCC RPG! So this dungeon has a lot of save or die things in it. Here was the problem: My dice were ice cold! I could not hit to save my life! And the PCs made every save! It was freakish.

- I tried to spice up the monsters. This is a dungeon that, IMO, has too much. Too many rooms. I'd prefer less rooms, each one unique, rather than multiple rooms with the same monsters.

- Our heroes hacked their way through the first level, killing some fungus, mites, an undead dude, stuff like that. They avoided every trap and found a cool fireball ring (this adventure has great magic items - a lot of them have about 4 charges, and something horrible happens when the last charge is expended).

- As the session went on, I felt it start to drag. I knew that level two was much more bogged-down than this one. So once the heroes descended to level two, I ended a little early. I knew I had to go home and streamline this dungeon. Level two has a bunch of rooms with 2 kobolds or 2 gnolls. I need to toss them so the players don't get bored.

- I can't tell if I should raise DCs for the save or die stuff. I think I should not. The players just rolled well... that kind of thing comes around. The problem was that the rolls told a boring story. They are still injured, as the bad guys chipped away at them. One PC did die (killed by a fellow PC's fireball... figures!).

Next week we will do level two, and who knows, maybe level 3 as well. I like this adventure, but I feel like I need to make it my own a bit more to suit my personal tastes and the tastes of my players.

[Netherstorm]

We got through most of the second level of the Slaughtergrid tonight. Going in, I was a bit worried. The dungeon on paper looked a bit flat. Lots of rooms with kobolds or goblins or gnolls. I thought the players would get bored. I reserved the right to quietly start cutting the dull rooms and getting them to the good stuff.

As it turns out, it ran incredibly well in play. I didn't have to adjust anything. Each and every room had something worthwhile about it.

- There was a nice bit of "non-combat" stuff. When the party ran into 7 kobolds making a trap, they were able to trick the kobolds into thinking that the PCs worked for their boss - the pit troll Jedda. They grovelled and gave the heroes directions to her room. There was also a room where a goblin and a gnoll were cooking up hideous meals out of spiders and worms. The PCs forced them to cook a delicious meal. The monsters actually succeeded and were allowed to leave.

- The heroes acquired a number of cool magic items, including a ring that lets you "hulk up" with muscles. The party thief kept using her ring of fire, which casts the spell fireball. When she used the final charge, the ring exploded and killed another PC and her pet chicken. This means both the PC and the chicken were reborn in the ovum with mutations. The chicken ended up gaining the lower body of a snake. Then it died again (long story) and it also gained the ability to spit acid, but also became a hemophiliac.

- Jedda's room is hilarious. She is a pit troll who is being massaged by three nude male goblinoids. I also quite enjoyed the treasure, which included a gold crown sitting in a jar of urine. It was worth 450 gold, so you know the PCs were going to reach in and get it.

Overall it was a very good session. We have played about 31 sessions of DCC RPG, and most of the PCs are level 3. The progression is slow but feels right, somehow. A cleric hit level 4 tonight, so we're starting to get up there.

[Netherstorm]

Session 32 is in the books. We are continuing to make our way through The Slaughtergrid.

- Maybe it's in there and I missed it, but the adventure doesn't take into account what happens to the monsters when they die. In this dungeon, when you die you are immediately reborn with a mutation. So what I did was, I had the monsters be reborn, but they remain on level one in fear of the PCs, preferring to wait until the heroes make their way through the dungeon. Jedda the Pit Troll commands them and is intrigued by the heroes, to the chagrin of her gnoll alpha male.

- We had an interesting encounter with feces-soaked spears. There were a few deaths tonight. The thief's hen keeps dying. It got a new mutation - and evil mouth in its' body that spouts wisdom. The party loves this thing.

- The heroes battled indigo gels and one wizard made his way to the lake f acid. In the center is a pile of trapped treasure, which paralyzed him. Long story, basically he died and was reborn in the ovum with bat wings. Awesome.

This is a great adventure. We will hopefully finish it next week. The party seems to like acquiring more magic items than normal. It helps that this dungeon is full of cool oddities, like a +2 shield that kills a random person in the world each time it is used (the person can be seen on the inside of the shield).

[Netherstorm]

We finished The Slaughtergrid last night. Very good adventure!

- DCC RPG monster stats are interesting. The PCs are 3rd and 4th level, and still I can get away with using monster stats from the 1st and 2nd level adventures. It's nice. So far there's been almost no "power creep" at all. This is a very easy game to run. Converting the monster stats in Slaughtergrid was very easy.

- As this adventure is all about dying and being reborn with a mutation, the PCs started to embrace it more. There was a battle with a violet mucus that sprays you, gives you dementia, and forces you to fight your nearest ally. This led to the PCs gleefully murdering each other and excitedly rolling their new mutations.

- There's a hilarious area where there's these two giant polyps that mutter to each other. When you pass by them in a hallway, a curse hits you that causes a random organ to explode out of your body. The polyps tricked multiple PCs into marching to their doom.

- I love the different otyugh variants in this place. There' something about a shapeshifting otyugh that is really amusing. It posed as a lady cleric in distress. Her odor somewhat gave her away.

- The final bad guy is a hideous combination of.. genitals. There's a full page drawing of it. This is definitely not for everyone. It worked for us, though. One PC swore a Bowel Oath but int he end the hideous Progenitor was slain and our heroes escaped The Slaughtergrid.

My plan for next week is twofold:

1. Do a little encounter where these androids come after the party wizard. The androids are controlled by clerics of Gorhan, who are looking to wipe all of the cultists of The One Who Watches off of the planet. I ultimately want to reveal that the head cleric is now one with the crashed spaceship. I plan on mining stuff from the classic D&D adventure "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks".

2. I want the heroes to go through another classic D&D Adventure: "The Dancing Hut" from Dragon Magazine 92. I've had it sitting on a shelf for a long time, and I realized that it fits pretty well into DCC RPG, what with the tanks and everything. I'll start this next Monday.

It sounds like we might have snagged another new player which would bring us up to 7 players total. We're doing pretty well lately.

[Netherstorm]

The past couple weeks in the epic World Tour 2014 have been taking place inside the legendary Baba Yaga's Hut. I converted the AD&D 1st edition Dragon Magazine adventure to DCC, only to realize that it is sorely lacking in detail. This was solved by using the material from the 4th edition D&D version of the same adventure which was extremely well done.

Short Version: The First session involved me using some material from Expedition to the Barrier Peaks for my android cleric villains. Then the heroes went to the hut to deal with an evil double of a PC. They explored a bit, encountered a medusa, and we stopped when the PCs ran into Baba Yaga herself in the audience hall.

Long Version: http://thecampaign20xx.blogspot.com/201 ... g-hut.html

Short Version: Session 2 allowed the PCs explore the hut some more, battling copies of the double (made by the magic pool in one of the final rooms of the dungeon). They got to the room I was most excited about - the museum with the soviet tank. A double was in the tank and opened fire. It was awesome. The store we were playing in was so loud that we ended this session early.

Long Version: http://thecampaign20xx.blogspot.com/201 ... -tank.html

This campaign will probably be ending at the end of the new year. The PCs are closing in on level 5 and we are running out of adventures! My plan right now is for the PCs to defeat the double and then be offered a deal from Baba Yaga. She will let the use her hut (it is after all a statted-out magic item in 1st edition) on the condition that they use it to take down her enemy - Noohl of the Court of Chaos.

They'll also have the opportunity to use the hut to go find the android cleric's home church - the spaceship from Barrier Peaks which is now controlled by an AI modeled after the head cleric's psyche.

That should all provide for a suitable explosive ending to the campaign!

[Netherstorm]

We finished Baba Yaga, skipped a week, and then played again tonight. I think next week will be the final session.

Final part of Baba Yaga:

Short Version: They fought a DCC RPG hydra, which was very deadly. I handed out treasure from the Pathfinder Reign of Winter path, which is awesome and all about Baba Yaga. There was a lot of hijinks with a cursed berserking sword. A PC ended up flying into a rift into the astral plane, with the sword, perhaps never to be seen again. They battled the double and won...

Long Version: http://thecampaign20xx.blogspot.com/201 ... ursed.html

Tonight we began the endgame to my campaign. Baba Yaga gave the heroes her hut (the ad&D 1e version of it, touched up with stats from the 1e adventure in dragon magazine) on the condition that they kill Noohl from the Court of Chaos (from "Intrigue at the Court of Chaos"). The Court has been hounding the PCs since that adventure, trying to get their hands on the Balance Blade, which can sway the balance between law and chaos. With each chaotic soul slain, the more control Law has. I also have the sword charging up with a power that can change a section of land into a lawful place like the plane of law. The player with the balance blade has it all charged up but hasn't expended it yet.

So tonight's game was all about handing my players the keys, so to speak. They have their mission, I had prepared notes on the Court, and it's up to them to proceed. I created an island for each member of the court to live on in the sea of blood from "Intrigue", I used material from the dungeon dozen blog to flesh out each island.

My thinking was that the PCs could try to recruit another member of the court to betray Noohl. I wrote up motivations for each member of the court. The PCs could also call on Lexaliah and the Scions of Law for help, too. Further, I figured they could plunge the charged-up sword into Noohl to destroy him - they'd just need to figure out a way to get close to him.

Welp, here's what happened:

- The PCs went to Hekanhodah's island, to kill him and use his magic items to defeat Noohl. Hekanhodah pummeled the party with magic missiles. The party surrendered. Hekanhodah demanded the Balance Blade, and the fighter plunged it into Hekanhodah, expending the law charge and stripping away all of Hekanhodah's corruption and pretty much reducing him to a feeble old man.

- The heroes then fled to the hut, arguing about what to do next. They'd stolen Hekanhodah's spell book and the Staff of Ekim (+6 to spell checks!). Long story short, Magog found out the PCs were on the isle, and offered to help them against Noohl if they handed over the balance blade. The fighter, who is lawful, refused. Magog vanished, and told Noohl everything. Noohl ordered a fleet of his ships to sail to hekanhodah's island...

- Meanwhile, our heroes remain in the hut on hekanhodah's island as imminent doom approaches. They argue about what to do next. The guy who was taught to drive the hut points out that the court wants the balance blade and the evil party wizard most of all (she has a long history with the court). Evil party wizard takes great offense to the idea of being handed over to the court, and casts magic missile on the hut driver guy (named Bogus). Bogus takes 40 points of damage and nearly dies!

- Cleric heals Bogus. The party tries to rest. Then, Bogus hears crows outside the hut through the magic mirror. Bogus tells the party something is going on outside. Evil wizard goes outside to take a look. Bogus plane shifts the hut away! Evil Wizard is all alone as Noohl's fleet sails the sea of blood. The crows are chaos-crows that have four talons and can breathe probability-altering clouds.

- Evil wizard decides to try to fight off Noohl's fleet with the mighty staff of Ekim, dropping Emirikol's Entropic Maelstrom on a ship, paralyzing the entire crew. She summons a wall of eyes that fire lasers (custom spell from his patron - The One Who Watches From Below). But Noohl's catapult-launched ogre paratroopers drop down past the wall and hack into the evil wizard, dropping her to a single hit point. She surrenders, and offers to help Noohl take down her former allies and snatch the Balance Blade from them.

Bogus and evil wizard will each be emailing me extensive plans in what will be the final battle of the campaign. It'll be Noohl's army and the evil wizard vs. the party.

Normally I discourage inter-party combat, but everybody is enjoying it and it's not personal, so what the hell. It's all ending anyway, so why not? This has been brewing since the very first session - the evil wizard has nearly betrayed or come to blows with the other characters on numerous occasions.

[Netherstorm]

We just had the final session of this campaign...

Originally I thought a nice way to end it is to have the evil PC lead an army against the other PCs in a final war like what is going on in the Knights of the Dinner Table comic. But during the week I talked to some of the players, and they weren't into that idea at all. They wanted to just take Baba Yaga's hut and roam the planes, and leave the evil PC behind for good.

It's been like this from the beginning. This campaign has had tension between the players from the very start and it's been a struggle the whole way through.

So I switched it up and basically ran two adventures tonight. One determined the fate of the balance blade, and the other determined the fate of the evil PC.

The heroes with the balance blade took baba yaga's hut to the astral sea to search for the PC who had the cursed berserking sword. It turned out he'd been snatched up by an "eldritch dragon" and was in the dragon's weird lair ripped off from the "Dragon's Graveyard" episode of the dungeons and dragons cartoon.

The dungeon the dragon lived in had traps that gave you corruption. The dragon is studying the correlation between corruption and wild magic (I love the wild magic table in the AD&D 2nd edition Tome of Magic).

Magic in this place is more potent, and any use of magic caused a wild surge.

Our heroes freed the PC and fought the dragon, who unleashed its' breath weapon which caused many wild surges that spread the radius, opened portals to other planes, splintered off into a lightning bolt, changed a guy's gender, and all sorts of other crazy effects.

The heroes killed the dragon and saved their friend. An agent of law, also a prisoner there, decided that the heroes were not worthy of the balance blade. Only one member of the party is lawful, after all. He demanded the blade. They cut off his arm, then his head. They took the hut to an island to spend the rest of their days, hiding out from the Scions of law.

I would cut back between that scenario and the evil wizard's. I should note that the player of the evil wizard character is male, but the character is female.

The evil wizard rode with Noohl's chaos army. I meant this to be a test of just how evil he was. I was going to give him a bunch of situations like this:

- You see the town leader surrounded by monsters, being cut down, what do you do?
- You see the town's retired hero being overrun, what do you do?
- You see the goofy little kid NPC who always picks his nose (his name is Booger Neil), what do you do?

I wanted to see if he'd ask them to take some of the favored NPCs prisoner.

Instead, before I even got to that scenario, he said he was scanning the town for Booger Neil. When he found him, he killed him with a magic missile. Welp. OK then.

The town was overrun. A few captives were taken, to be used to force the PCs to hand over the Balance Blade.

Then, though, the bad guys took the heroes' fortress and headed into the basement dungeon. This is the evil PCs' lair, where he is building a dungeon for his patron, The One Who Watches From Below. The evil PC suddenly got nervous. He didn't want them killing his weird little halfling monsters.

Suddenly, a mighty alien ship appeared over the fortress. The cleric of Gorhan had come to kill the evil PC for good. Lasers rained down on the fortress, killing most of Noohl's army. Androids wearing anti-grav belts dropped from hatches to hack into the rest.

The evil PC turned into a laser harpy and flew into the ship. She hacked her way past androids, turned back into her mortal form, had a bunch of misadventures, but in the end deactivated a force field, blew up the ship's core, and escaped in a pod.

The One Who Watches guided her to his sanctum in a stretch of barren land.

That's how it ended. The evil PC now serves The One Who Watches, and the heroes are on a tropical island somewhere with the balance blade.

All in all I love the world tour program and I love the DCC adventures. We had a total of 38 sessions, and it was definitely worth doing. Thanks for reading!